Built for the service year.
By someone who served.
Every year, 350,000 Nigerian graduates are mobilised for NYSC. Every year, they get paid ₦77,000 a month by the Federal Government — on time, for twelve months. And every year, the Nigerian financial system pretends they don't exist. We started Alawee to fix that.
Why Alawee exists.
I served in 2020. By day 15 of every month, my account was empty. Rent. Food. Transport to PPA. Data to keep up with my CDS WhatsApp group. The math never worked. I borrowed from my mum most months. A friend took a loan from Carbon and spent six months being called by strangers at 6AM.
This was 2020, when the allawee was still ₦19,800. Then ₦33,000 in 2023. Now ₦77,000. Every batch, the same cycle repeats — just with slightly different numbers. Nigerian corpers are probably the most underwritable workers in the country: the Federal Government is their employer, the stipend is fixed, the duration is known, and there's a BVN, a NIN, and an assigned bank account attached to every single one of them. And yet: no bank will lend to them, and the fintechs that do treat them like gig workers.
I'm building Alawee because the existing answer — borrow from mum or take a 25% loan and suffer — is genuinely bad and the solution is genuinely simple. Lend against the federal paycheck. Charge a fair rate because the default risk is low. Auto-debit on payday so no one has to chase anyone. Everything else — the wallet, the savings vault, the insurance — follows from having 350,000 people at the start of their financial lives, most of whom will go on to build real careers and become lifetime banking customers.
I've built payments systems, and a trading infrastructure end-to-end as a founder. I know how to make complex financial software actually ship. Now I'm applying that to the cohort I served with and the cohort that comes next.
Four non-negotiables.
Things we promise now and will still honour at Series D.
Rates that make sense.
We charge 5% monthly on advances — roughly a third of what Carbon or FairMoney charge. Our unit economics work at this rate because the default risk on federal income is genuinely lower. We will never raise rates to juice margins; if anything, we'll cut them as the book seasons.
No aggressive collection. Ever.
We auto-debit on payday. That's the entire collection cycle. We do not call. We do not text your contacts. We do not bulk-message your emergency contacts or your last-known-employer. If we can't recover the money this way, we write it off. Dignity is not a growth tactic we'll trade.
Fees are shown, always.
Every fee, every rate, every total repayment amount — visible before you tap "accept." No "processing fee" that appears in the small print. No "insurance" that's actually a margin line. If there's a number, it's on the screen.
Your data is yours.
We don't sell your transaction data to third parties. We don't monetise your contacts. We don't use behavioural data to discriminate against you on rates — your limit is a deterministic function of your remaining service months. Read our privacy policy; it's short and doesn't hide behind legalese.
Small. For now.
Alawee is founder-led and solo on product and engineering today. We're hiring the first six roles with this round — credit, operations, engineering, compliance, growth. If any of this sounds like your job, we'd love to meet you.
Your service year
deserves better.
Join the Batch B waitlist. First in line for cards, higher starting limits, and a free month of Alawee Pro at launch.